Hi, I'm planning on upgrading my ATI 5870 to a GTX 670 and I am wondering whether I will experience a noticeable bottleneck with my Phenom II x4 965 at 3.8ghz. I play at 1920x1080 resolution and I'll mainly be playing BF3. What kind of fps should I expect in BF3 with Ultra settings and 4xmsaa?

BF3 will mostly be gpu limited and the fps should be about 60 with that setup. If you're locked at that frame rate then you shouldn't really have a problem.

Not true. Online play is very CPU heavy. For reference, my i7-920 was bottlenecking GTX 560 Ti in 64-player Conquest which is probably the most popular game mode. FPS would be 60 most of the time but it would drop to 45 on occasion and GPU-Z would report much less than full GPU load during those moments.

Phenom II X4 is a good 30-50% slower than i7-920, and GTX 670 is 70% faster than 560 Ti. There will be bottlenecking pretty much all the time during online play, and it will be severe on the larger servers.

I concur with lehtv. I have an i5-2400 at 3.7 and it bottlenecks my overclocked 580 on 64 player maps. In heavy fights i see dips into the high 40s. Maintaining 60+ fps on 64 player maps is VERY cpu heavy.

Hi, I'm planning on upgrading my ATI 5870 to a GTX 670 and I am wondering whether I will experience a noticeable bottleneck with my Phenom II x4 965 at 3.8ghz. I play at 1920x1080 resolution and I'll mainly be playing BF3. What kind of fps should I expect in BF3 with Ultra settings and 4xmsaa?

Thanks

Any particular reason you are prioritizing a GPU upgrade versus upgrading the CPU instead?

Any particular reason you are prioritizing a GPU upgrade versus upgrading the CPU instead?

BF3 is very GPU depended, HD5870 is too slow for that game unless you dont care playing at lower IQ settings. But doing so you get a handicap vs other players playing with High or Ultra settings. (View distance etc)

How much does the speed and type of Internet Service provider affect play? I ask because I notice the mention of how this or that cpu affects multiplayer performance and I wonder what service provider the poster is using. Just curious. For example, lehtv, I follow your posts and they make sense. What ISP do you use? I wonder how much affect it has on different cpus being used? BTW I use Comcast but opted for a higher service than standard.

That's pretty good So he stands to gain about 21-23 fps with overclocking for BF3. Hopefully, his setup can handle the OC'd FX-8350 and the electricity it demands. Now, all that is left is figuring out the discrepancy in performance between the 7970 and 5870 and the resulting framerate.

That's pretty good So he stands to gain about 21-23 fps with overclocking for BF3. Hopefully, his setup can handle the OC'd FX-8350 and the electricity it demands. Now, all that is left is figuring out the discrepancy in performance between the 7970 and 5870 and the resulting framerate.

I went from a 5850 to a 7950 and got pretty much the same framerate.

Why? Because you can adjust the resolution, AA, and texture quality so you can always be CPU limited or limited by the refresh rate of the monitor. If you move from a 5870 to a 7970 you'll get a better looking game with the same framerate. BF3 multiplayer is CPU limited even on an overclocked i5 so you'll get better performance out of a new CPU and in this case AMD's chips are competitive. Can a 3.8ghz PhII give you decent framerates, yes, but you can do better with more CPU. Set your graphics settings to low and see what your framerates are. Then, you can see if you are happy with the performance. I'd say you'll be dropping into the 30s with that CPU on some scenes. When I went from a 3ghz Q6600 to a 4.4ghz i5 the difference in framerate was substantial. When I went from a stock 5850 to a OC 7950 the difference was only visual. It looked better but ultimately I was a little disappointed since I was still CPU limited so I upgraded to that i5.

Great information there. First, a heavily overclocked Phenom II is a serious bottleneck to a 7970 (and hence a 670). Second, a hugely overclocked Vishera (5GHz!?!) is almost as fast as the slowest Ivy quad sold, the i5-3330.

Honestly, I'd get the 3330 before upgrading to Vishera. Better yet, I'd get the 3570k, and I'd do it before upgrading the 5870, which is actually quite fast in BF3. It can average close to 50fps at 1080p/high, which is better than the OP's Phenom can achieve.

Why? Because you can adjust the resolution, AA, and texture quality so you can always be CPU limited or limited by the refresh rate of the monitor. If you move from a 5870 to a 7970 you'll get a better looking game with the same framerate. BF3 multiplayer is CPU limited even on an overclocked i5 so you'll get better performance out of a new CPU and in this case AMD's chips are competitive. Can a 3.8ghz PhII give you decent framerates, yes, but you can do better with more CPU. Set your graphics settings to low and see what your framerates are. Then, you can see if you are happy with the performance. I'd say you'll be dropping into the 30s with that CPU on some scenes. When I went from a 3ghz Q6600 to a 4.4ghz i5 the difference in framerate was substantial. When I went from a stock 5850 to a OC 7950 the difference was only visual. It looked better but ultimately I was a little disappointed since I was still CPU limited so I upgraded to that i5.

I ask these questions because I get to learn something--I'm myself am ignorant on these matters--and I think the OP would be well-served with good information.

This guy does have a hard requirement for resolution; he mentioned it in the opening post, but he can adjust those other settings you mentioned.

Great information there. First, a heavily overclocked Phenom II is a serious bottleneck to a 7970 (and hence a 670). Second, a hugely overclocked Vishera (5GHz!?!) is almost as fast as the slowest Ivy quad sold, the i5-3330.

Honestly, I'd get the 3330 before upgrading to Vishera. Better yet, I'd get the 3570k, and I'd do it before upgrading the 5870, which is actually quite fast in BF3. It can average close to 50fps at 1080p/high, which is better than the OP's Phenom can achieve.

That "slowest IB quad" is running OCed to ~3.6Ghz + Turbo on top of that. Also that "slowest IB quad" is1-2% slower than fastest IB quad in that chart (3570K @ 4.5Ghz).
Obviously the 7970 is being a bottleneck in BF3 for all OCed CPUs in top half of the chart.

That "slowest IB quad" is running OCed to ~3.6Ghz + Turbo on top of that. Also that "slowest IB quad" is1-2% slower than fastest IB quad in that chart (3570K @ 4.5Ghz).
Obviously the 7970 is being a bottleneck in BF3 for all OCed CPUs in top half of the chart.

That's still slow by overclocked IVB standards, and it's actually pretty clear it's still bottlenecking the 7970. 72.2 is not equal to 74.3. That's a 3% difference, and given the number of CPUs tested, I would not just chalk that up to testing error.

That "slowest IB quad" is running OCed to ~3.6Ghz + Turbo on top of that. Also that "slowest IB quad" is1-2% slower than fastest IB quad in that chart (3570K @ 4.5Ghz).
Obviously the 7970 is being a bottleneck in BF3 for all OCed CPUs in top half of the chart.

You are correct about the second chart. Overclocked FX and all the overclocked Intel CPUs are basically GPU limited.

But look at the first graph, the i5 3330 is running at 3ghz and is faster than the stock FX.
Overclocked to 5ghz the Fx is only very slightly faster than the stock 3330, but the overclocked FX and most of the intel cpus overclocked or not are becoming GPU limited.

Actually, I am surprised that the FX did not do better in this test, since it is the best case scenario for Vishera. With both at stock, I would have thought the FX would have been very close to the 3570, but in fact it was more than 20% slower.

I don't have any graphs or benchmarks to post here, but can give my own experience. I pretty much exclusively play BF3. I run a Phenom II X6 1090t overclocked to 3.8GHz and an EVGA 460 2win(essentially SLI'd GTX 460 1GB cards). If I play on a 32 person or lower server I am *usually* gpu bottlenecked(not always, but almost always). Any higher player count than that and I am certainly cpu bottlenecked. I can turn my resolution to 800x640 or whatever the lowest bf3 allows is, turn all the graphics settings to low(at that resolution it almost looks like Goldeneye on the n64 lol), and my frame rate does not change. I am usually at around 40fps. It's playable, but I intentionally usually avoid 64 person servers because of it.

Interestingly enough, despite how much I hear 'multiplayer bf3 likes threads', I do not see much of a difference in min, max or average fps between having my affinity set to use all 6 threads, or setting it to only use 4. The main difference I see is that with 4 threads, all are around 100%, where with 6 none run that close to 100%. In my experience(which is very specifically my experience, could be the maps I play, some other bottleneck, etc. etc.) it doesn't usually utilize more than 4 threads. Also, this may be a difference because all my cores are physical cores and not hyperthreading. Regardless, I would benefit more from a CPU upgrade than a GPU upgrade at this point for multiplayer BF3. I would suggest the same to you if trying to play on 64 player servers. For me the decision on what to do is a bit tougher because I primarily use my machine for highly multithreaded work that the Phenom X6 does pretty good on, and gaming is a second priority. Maybe I'll pick up a Piledriver to hold me off until Haswell or Haswell-E.

Also, I intentionally run on US servers that I have a low ping to, and have 50/5 cable service, so I don't think my connection to the multiplayer servers is what's responsible for what I've seen.

You are correct about the second chart. Overclocked FX and all the overclocked Intel CPUs are basically GPU limited.

But look at the first graph, the i5 3330 is running at 3ghz and is faster than the stock FX.
Overclocked to 5ghz the Fx is only very slightly faster than the stock 3330, but the overclocked FX and most of the intel cpus overclocked or not are becoming GPU limited.

Actually, I am surprised that the FX did not do better in this test, since it is the best case scenario for Vishera. With both at stock, I would have thought the FX would have been very close to the 3570, but in fact it was more than 20% slower.

Obviously it's game dependent. Some games run better on intel hardware , that's all. It may be better IPC intel CPUs have, better compiler optimization or both.